How bad are poor link profiles for a website?

[SoundinTheory]

A client has recently switched to us for their SEO and is hugely concerned about their previous company's link building efforts.They say that they have recently removed over 300 links but OSE still lists 160 links.So three questions:

1. How long will it take for OSE to recognise if the links have been removed?

2. How great could the effects of this be on the site's rankings?

3. If we continue to struggle with getting the links removed would Google's disavow tool make much of a difference or are there negatives that sould be considered first?

[GPainter]

Hiya,

First don't get too happy with removing links because unfortunately whist is may seem great to remove all the low links you need a broad ranks of link on a site and may do more harm than good if you remove all your low end link.

OSE can take a month to update so give it at least that before looking into removal.

The disavow is a great tool for removing bad links, make sure to try and get in touch with webmasters first though. A better method is to start building great content and work on building good links rather than focus too much on whats bad as I mentioned earlier most sites have a good variety of links.

Wish you the best of luck.

[SoundinTheory]

Many thanks, that is what I have been trying to explain to the client but they really are concerned about the penalty even though I can not see any evidence of it.

I am in the process of sorting out the their blog and a useful guide area so this will really help my argument.